


let me down (i'll let you do it again)

by amessofgaywords



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: F/F, and the squip squad makes a brief appearance, basically my take on chloe being brooke's squip, both chloe's and brooke's, it's a more realistic interpretation of their relationship, the squip is also here, there's feelings but they're mostly one sided
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27575920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amessofgaywords/pseuds/amessofgaywords
Summary: Wow. I can see we have alotof work to do.or brooke's squip manifests as chloe, and the aftermath.
Relationships: Brooke Lohst/Chloe Valentine
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	let me down (i'll let you do it again)

**Author's Note:**

> i've had some pinkberry fics floating around for a while, so this would be one of those. it's a tad angsty and with an ambiguous ending, so pretty par for the course when it comes to me. :)
> 
> title from worst of you by maisie peters.

_Wow. I can see we have a_ lot _of work to do._

The voice in Brooke’s head is familiar. She would think it was Chloe talking to her, except Chloe is on the floor next to her, clutching her head and panting kind of loudly, and also the voice is coming from inside her head.

Chloe is also in front of her. Wearing her purple jacket, the scratchy one that Brooke hates, and a short black skirt. She looks real and not at the same time. The outline of her body is clear, but every few seconds, her face glitches.

Not-Chloe is standing with her hands on her hips, staring right at Brooke with a predatory smirk, and she doesn’t blink. _You’re so… pathetic! Oh, this is going to be so fun._ Not-Chloe’s mouth moves along with the words, so it’s definitely her speaking them. She claps her hands, her smirk turning into a smile. _Okay. First things first, get up. You’re, like, prostrate on the floor. It’s lame._

A sharp feeling slices down Brooke’s spine, almost like a shock but more like the sensation of Not-Chloe’s sharp nails scraping at her skin. It jolts her into sitting up, and when Not-Chloe beckons with a finger, she stands.

She doesn’t know what’s going on, but it’s almost like she does. Like Not-Chloe comes with an instruction manual, filled with things like _Jeremy Heere wants to make your life better_ and _you can be more chill if you listen to me_ and _I’m your Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor, and I’m here to help you, Brookie!_

Only Chloe gets to call her Brookie. But this is Chloe, in a way. Brooke thinks she’s never hated Chloe’s smile more.

“What do you want from me?” She asks Not-Chloe. Not-Chloe rolls her eyes, checking the polish on her nails. It looks like little lightning bolts.

_Talk to me in your head, Brooke. No one else can see me and you’re going to look psycho. You don’t want to be like her, do you?_

Not-Chloe points one perfectly manicured finger at Chloe, the real Chloe, who’s recovered from her seizure and is just sitting on the ground, her costume for the play all messed up, staring at some point in the distance. Her mouth is hanging open and there are tears in her eyes. She looks _broken._

Not-Chloe makes a noise with her tongue, admonishing. Brooke swallows hard and looks back to her.

“No. I don’t want to be like her.”

_That’s it, Brookie. Now. What should we work on first? Your hair could definitely use some help, but that can come later when we’re home. There’s your wardrobe, too. God, those sweaters are so ugly, you need a double upgrade in that department. Ooh, what about Jeremy? He’s here! Let’s go find him and see if he wants to make out._ Not-Chloe holds out a hand. It glitches, but it feels solid when Brooke takes it. Dry, but warm. Like a computer overheating. Not-Chloe starts to drag her out to the stage.

“Wait, um. I don’t like Jeremy, really. I don’t think I want to make out with him.”

_That’s ridiculous. He thinks you’re hot and he’s popular. He’s perfect._

“But, um, he doesn’t like me?” Arguing with Not-Chloe is making Brooke’s head hurt. The real Chloe still hasn’t moved from the floor. Not-Chloe lets out an exasperated sigh and drops Brooke’s hand, turning to face her.

_No one likes you, Brooke. You’re desperate and clingy and you’re, like, addicted to frozen yogurt. You’re a total nerd. But you’re hot, so you have to use that to your advantage. If you date Jeremy, no one will care about those things. And then we can work on fixing the rest of you._

Not-Chloe folds her arms across her chest, tapping her foot impatiently. Brooke turns to look at Chloe, who struggles to her feet, blinking like she’s seeing the world for the first time. Her eyes skip over everything but Brooke, and she scurries to be close to her side, almost like she’s scared. Brooke reaches down to take her hand. Not-Chloe rolls her eyes.

_Whatever. She can come too, I guess. Two is always better than one. Especially when it comes to sex._ Ew. _Okay, let’s go. Jeremy is arguing with that headphones kid, so we can go distract him._ Brooke’s feet start moving, and Chloe’s do too, even though she isn’t sure either of them are doing it on purpose. She looks back at the real Chloe, and her eyes are glazed over, like she isn’t really seeing anything. Not-Chloe starts walking backwards, giving Brooke a smile that doesn’t reach her creepy, unblinking eyes.

_I promise, I’m here to help you, Brookie._

That’s the last thing she remembers before the world goes white.

\---

After the play, Brooke doesn’t exactly remember much. Flashes of pain in her head and everyone around her screaming, a minty taste in her mouth, and vague memories of someone who looked like Chloe but wasn’t yelling at her every move. Which is so actually painfully true to life that Brooke can’t even tell if that was part of the robot sci-fi nightmare or not.

Jeremy is guilty while he explains. Which makes sense, he did supercomputer roofie them all, so he should probably take responsibility. Brooke still isn’t going to hold it against him. Well, maybe the dating her for experience part, but mostly it’s fine.

It takes about a week for the whole thing to sink in. That she has a wintergreen tic tac in her head that can apparently control her body but also apparently is shut down, or something, now, and also it’ll never really go away. Jeremy tries to explain the whole thing as best as he can, but there are gaps in even what he knows. Rich fills in a little bit, but neither of them have the full story, really, and the scary stockboy guy who sold them the squips is gone from the Payless.

Chloe was right: ever since the play, Brooke has felt weirdly… close to everyone else who was “squipped,” as Jeremy and Michael put it. Like she _gets_ them, in a way she didn’t before. She understands why Rich gets all jumpy and flaily sometimes and why Jake doesn’t like it when people talk about his parents. And she gets why Jenna never posts selfies on her public Insta and why Christine the theater girl doesn’t really have any other friends. She even kinda gets why Jeremy tried to date her, even though it makes her mad, but she’s ignoring that.

The one thing she doesn’t get is Chloe. It should be the easiest thing in the world, understanding Chloe. After all, they’ve been best friends for literal years. And Chloe isn’t, like, the best at keeping secrets. At least Brooke didn’t think so, not until they all got un-squipped and she looked over at Chloe in her hospital bed across the room and saw her look so… empty. Pale and lifeless, kinda, like the light had been sucked out of her. She looked at Brooke with dull eyes, the vibrant green so muted Brooke was worried it would fade to grey. Her voice cracked when she said, “hey, Brookie,” and she burrowed deeper into her blanket cave when Brooke winced.

She winced because the memory of Not-Chloe murmuring _Brookie_ in her ear was accompanied by the phantom pain of shocks across her skin, and it _hurt._ In a lot of ways.

But Brooke ignores these feelings, cause, like, obviously. She throws herself into six new relationships, each one vastly different and all in that tedious place where no one is quite sure why they’re suddenly so close, but they know that it feels safe for some reason so they’re not going to jeopardize it. Suddenly, there’s a Squip Squad lunch table. Suddenly, Chloe doesn’t mind hanging out with losers so much. Even though she pretends to, but Brooke can see through her.

On a random Friday night at the end of November, all eight of them are in Michael’s basement, for some reason or another. Ostensibly to, like, debrief, or have a therapy session or something, but mostly they’re just eating junk food and playing Mario Kart. Brooke is on the couch, shoving Michael’s nanay’s kale chips in her mouth with one hand and absolutely _destroying_ everyone on Rainbow Road with the other. Chloe is leaning against her side, scrolling through Instagram on her phone and pretending she’s bored.

“Yo, dude,” Jake asks, nudging Jeremy from his position on the floor. It makes Jeremy fly off of a barrier on Rainbow Road and die, but he was losing anyway, so. “Can I ask you a squip question, man?”

Jeremy looks kind of green (but maybe that’s just the light from the TV). “Yeah, what’s up?” Rich gives Jake some serious side-eye, but Jake doesn’t notice.

“Just, uh, what were our squips supposed to mean? Like who they show up as. Does it mean anything?”

And suddenly, Brooke is paying so much attention. Jeremy sets down his controller, not caring that he dies, and looks over at Jake. The rest of the room tries to pretend that they’re not listening, but they totally are.

“I don’t know what it means exactly,” Jeremy starts. “But I think it’s supposed to be a person you’ll listen to and take advice from. It’s supposed to be something or, uh, someone that you can’t deny.” Next to Brooke, Chloe freezes up.

“Oh, cool, dawg,” Jake says, punching Jeremy in the arm. “Mine was Airbud. What was yours?”

“Keanu Reeves,” Jeremy admits sheepishly. Michael loudly announces that Rainbow Road is hereby banned in future Mario Kart sessions, and the tension in the room diffuses. Chloe doesn’t unfreeze next to Brooke for many more minutes.

And Brooke? Brooke has a lot to think about.

\---

For at least a week after the play, Brooke couldn’t look Chloe in the eye. That was different for them.

Brooke has always liked Chloe’s eyes, ever since she realized they were the exact same shade of green as her favorite shirt in seventh grade. She likes looking at them while Chloe’s talking, especially when she’s talking about something she’s excited about and they get all smiley and stuff. It makes Brooke feel kinda fizzy inside.

But since the play, Chloe’s eyes make Brooke feel fizzy in a different way. They’re filled with little electroshocks, and Brooke can’t stop seeing that predatory grin when she falls asleep, the careless way Not-Chloe would flick her hair and snap her fingers and Brooke would just react. _It’s how the squip works,_ Jeremy had told them. _It has complete control over you and it can make you do anything it wants._

_But that’s how Chloe and I work too,_ Brooke wanted to say. She didn’t.

When they were in middle school, Chloe had all these ideas. Like _let’s steal Madeleine’s backpack and put glue in it_ or _let’s go to the soccer game and pick out which boys are the hottest to be our boyfriends_ or _let’s buy you some new clothes cause the shirts you wear are seriously lame, Brookie._ And Brooke went along with them whether she really wanted to or not and she doesn’t know why anymore. That’s the thing.

Brooke knows that she loves Chloe. She doesn’t really know why.

Loving Chloe has been a thing, in one way or another, since they met. Chloe’s kind of impossible not to love. At least in Brooke’s opinion. She digs into you, sinks her claws in and doesn’t let you forget about her and eventually you start thinking about how nice it would be to kiss her and stuff. And all you want is to have her smile at you like she actually likes you. Brooke knows it, Jake knows it, even Jenna knows it, Chloe is just undeniable.

Except Chloe likes to flick her hair and snap her fingers and tell Brooke to get her a slushie or put on makeup or grab something from her locker. Maybe she wants her to use more conditioner and stop wearing long sweaters and always listen to her and agree with everything she says. Brooke does these things because Chloe says them. Because why?

Because Chloe. Chloe is the one who’s still there. Her parents don’t pay attention. Her brothers are dicks. All of her other friends have left her for something better after a while. Chloe is the one who still picks up the phone when Brooke calls. At least, most of the time.

Brooke didn’t use to mind it. She minds it all the time now. 

Chloe’s hand in hers used to feel like an anchor; now it feels like a weight. Chloe’s arm brushing hers used to be electricity; now it’s shocks to her nervous system. Chloe’s smile used to light the world; now it’s a single bulb in a dark, wet room. Brooke is tied to a chair, and Chloe holds a flashlight over her, her teeth glowing, asking Brooke if she has anything to say for herself, and one of Chloe’s headbands is wrapped around her mouth so she can’t talk. Maybe all that is extreme, but she’s been having a lot of nightmares lately.

There’s been avoidance. There’s been missed opportunities. There’s been a lot less staring than usual, but even when Brooke does it, it still feels different. Chloe doesn’t shine in the same way. She glitches in and out of Brooke’s peripheral. Sometimes if Brooke looks too hard at her she starts to feel sick.

She’s been trying extra hard to pretend like everything’s fine, cause above everything she doesn’t want Chloe to get mad. When Chloe gets mad, bad things happen, and honestly, even though Brooke’s been almost avoiding, she still doesn’t want to _lose_ Chloe. That sounds like just about the worst thing that could ever happen. She doesn’t want to be left alone like that. It hurts enough when Chloe ignores her now.

Brooke pretends and nobody knows the difference. Maybe that means more than she’s letting on.

\---

Chloe walks up to Brooke after school on Monday. “You free right now?”

Brooke shrugs, trying to fit her massive Psych textbook in her locker. Finally she just gives up and sticks it under her arm, leaning on the creaky metal door with her shoulder to close it and locking it with a definitive click. She stares up at Chloe’s pensive eyes and immediately looks away. Electric shocks down her spine. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Do you, uh, do you wanna go to Pinkberry?” Chloe’s tentative smile doesn’t bring warmth to Brooke’s stomach the way it normally does. She swallows.

“I can drive.”

It would be dumb to say Brooke is the only one suffering in the aftermath of the squip. _Obviously,_ Jeremy and Rich are dealing with some _shit,_ and Jake and Michael are doing their best to help with that. And everyone has their own way of processing, Brooke supposes. She’s avoiding. Chloe is retreating.

She’s been quiet. A little less opinionated, a little less loud. Less mean, too, but all that is drowned out by how dull she seems. She’s been wearing a lot of darker colors and Brooke hasn’t seen her in her favorite floral jackets in weeks. They haven’t been to Pinkberry since the play either. Brooke would lie and say that it doesn’t bother her the way things have changed. But since she’s partly to blame too, that would be pretty dumb.

Chloe gets coffee-strawberry with brownie chunks at Pinkberry, her go-to order when she wants comfort. She spends about ten minutes stabbing it with her spoon before she finally takes a bite. The relief on her face is a special kind of shattering. Brooke just sips her mango smoothie.

“How’ve you been?” she asks, cause they haven’t really talked since everything. Chloe just shrugs.

“Eh. I talked to Jake.”

“Okay.”

“I think… I think we’re really over this time. He wants to spend more time with Rich.” She doesn’t even sound mad when she says it. A little wistful, maybe a pinch of regret, but mostly just… empty. Lonely, if Brooke would even go there.

“Okay.” Brooke removes the cap of her smoothie and sucks at the straw with her tongue, trying to get to the chunks of fruit stuck in the bottom. Chloe stares at her, brow furrowed.

“That’s so gross,” she says quietly. A little bit of a smile breaks out on her face, and Brooke just shrugs, licking up the last of the smoothie and putting her cap back on. “Uh, what about you?”

“Fine.” Brooke taps her foot on the floor along to the music that’s playing, some Taylor Swift song she sorta recognizes. She still can’t really meet Chloe’s eyes, but Chloe is doing everything she can to reach out, and that counts for something.

“I wanted to apologize, Brookie. Having that, uh, thing in my head, it- it made a lot of stuff really obvious. And I feel like such an idiot for not seeing it before, but I was so. So bitchy to you, like really horrible. I know I acted like you weren’t worth anything and I tried to- uh. Like, silence you. And I’m really, really sorry about it. About Halloween, about, um, everything.”

Brooke had almost forgotten Halloween, but the taste of stale beer and the hot, stuffy air of Jake’s parents room with the busted window flashes back to her so suddenly she almost falls out of her chair. She maintains her composure, though.

Chloe’s eyes are watery when Brooke glances up at them. She props her chin in her hand and plays with her straw.

“Thanks for saying that, I guess.” It’s funny, because Brooke used to daydream about the moment Chloe would come to her senses. She used to imagine holding her hand and telling her it was all okay, that she forgave her. Now, she wants nothing more than for this conversation to end. “Um, it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine, Brookie.” Chloe scoffs, she rolls her eyes. Some habits are hard to break. “You always say that it’s fine like your feelings don’t matter, but they totally do. I don’t want you to be sad or angry or whatever, I don’t want to- I don’t want to make you that way.”

“It’s a little too late for that, Chloe.” Brooke doesn’t know why she’s getting angry. She doesn’t usually get angry, but there’s a spark in her chest fueled by Chloe’s lightning shock eyes and it won’t die down no matter what she does. “And, could you not call me Brookie?”

Don’t think for a second Brooke misses the way Chloe physically recoils, tensing like the words have punched a hole in her heart. “What? I mean, why?”

“You. Uh, I mean, my squip called me Brookie.” Who knows why she admits it. Why would she say it, when it’s been so clear from the beginning? Chloe says _Brookie_ in that singsong voice and Brooke comes running, hoping she’ll get a taste of Chloe’s sugar-sweet strawberry smiles even though they’re empty calories, not the sour cherry sting of salt in the wound. The many, many wounds. It hurts Brooke to think about it like it hurts Chloe to hear it as she puts together the pieces.

“You mean I… I was your squip?” Chloe’s voice breaks, the mirror of a tear falling down her cheek and taking a little bit of her mascara with it. Chloe wipes at it furiously with a napkin, smearing her eye makeup around. Brooke raises a chunk of hair to her mouth – really bad habit – and chews and doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to. Chloe knows already. In a way, she’s sort of always known.

“Wow,” Chloe continues. “I mean, I knew I could be bad, but I didn’t think. Shit. Are you, like- is this why you’ve been avoiding me?” Of course she’s noticed. She’s Chloe freaking Valentine, nothing gets by her. Brooke just shrugs.

“I dunno. Maybe I just needed some space.”

“Right.” Brooke’s got space now, tons of it, crushing her, composting her. It presses in from all angles, suffocating silence between them like an uncrossable moat filled with underwater vampires or something else scary like that. Brooke can’t breathe all of a sudden. Chloe drums her fingers on the table, doing her best to muster her composure. “Brookie- Brooke, I think, maybe, space is a good idea.”

“Yeah.” Chloe shoves her phone into her backpack and stands up, picking up her mostly full yogurt. She looks down at it, and Brooke can see her swallow down bile. Out of nowhere, she wonders what Chloe’s squip said to her. She wants to ask but it’s _super_ not the time.

Chloe shoulders her backpack and chucks her cup in the trash without a second thought. “I’m just gonna walk home. The park is only a couple blocks away, so. Um. I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.”

Brooke spends the next hour in Pinkberry waiting for the usual post-fight apology text. It never comes.

\---

At home later that night, Brooke’s phone rings with a FaceTime call. It’s Chloe. She picks up anyway.

The other end of the call is dark at first, then a light goes on. It’s late, nearing ten, and Brooke’s parents are out. Chloe’s probably are too. Brooke feels a little lonely, tucked into her bed in her favorite yellow sweater. Chloe’s breathing on the phone fizzes up her heart a little and she hates it.

Chloe’s out of frame at first. Brooke can tell she’s propped up on Chloe’s desk, maybe against one of her textbooks or her grey lamp or something. Brooke can see Chloe’s bed, unmade and covered in blankets, and the light in her bathroom is on.

Chloe comes out of her closet, pulling on a sweatshirt. She walks into the frame from the left, and bites down on her lip when she sees Brooke. “Oh. Hey. It was taking a second to connect.”

“I hate FaceTime.” Brooke rolls over. Her picture in the upper right corner is mostly dark, the light from her phone filling her face and making her look like a ghost. A lock of hair crosses her forehead and she pushes it out of the way.

Chloe chuckles. “Yeah, same.” She pushes her wet hair behind her ear; she must have just gotten out of the shower. Flopping down in her desk chair, she smiles crookedly. Brooke watches her pull her knees up to her chest, laying her chin on them. “Um, could we talk? About earlier?”

“I thought you said we needed space,” Brooke says, and Chloe’s smile fades.

“Heh. Yeah, I guess that’s, uh- harder than I thought? I don’t know. I just really wanted to say something. Is- is that okay?” Brooke shrugs, and Chloe clears her throat, rubbing at her nose. One hand reaches down, and Brooke can see her fiddle with a scrunchie at the bottom of the screen. “Uh, okay. So I was walking home and thinking about everything, and I just wanted to tell you that. Well. You’re not alone, with the whole squip thing.” Brooke doesn’t understand, but she waits for Chloe to explain. “My, ha. My squip was me too.”

Brooke blinks. She shakes her head. “Wait. Seriously?”

“Yeah.” Chloe shrugs, and she starts tying the scrunchie into a knot one-handed. “So, I guess when the whole thing happened I was really freaked out, cause I didn’t get it. I thought I was just high or hallucinating or something, or, like, some god somewhere decided they needed to show me how much of a bitch I am or something. I don’t know, I’m not religious.” Chloe sighs, leaning back in her chair. “Okay. So, then Jeremy told us all what it was, and I was, like, pissed, but also it kinda made sense. And I think I was really scared, to admit that I’m so screwed up I can only listen to myself, you know? So I tried to just forget about it or whatever.”

Brooke sits up and props her phone up against a pillow at the end of her bed. She lays down so she’s facing the camera, waiting while Chloe deliberates her words. She turns on her bedside lamp so Chloe can see her, and notices how messy her hair looks. Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

Chloe swallows hard, then clears her throat again. “Yeah. Okay. So. Why is this so hard to say?” She drops her forehead to her knees and groans, and Brooke giggles despite herself. Chloe has a smile on her face when she looks up again. “So I guess I just wanted to say, um. I’m really freaking sorry. I can’t believe it took one of those squip things to make me see how horrible I was being, especially to you, and I guess I’m just, I don’t know, disappointed in myself? Yeah. I am.”

“Thanks, Chloe,” Brooke says. The call goes quiet. Chloe scratches at the skin on her wrist, Brooke plays with the sleeves of her sweater. They stare at the screens but not quite at each other.

“Hey, Brooke?” Brooke hums in acknowledgment. “I know that we can’t just pretend this never happened, but. I want things to be better between us, y’know? I- I really like spending time with you. And so I just wanna say, or, ask I guess, do you think we can maybe… try again?”

Chloe’s voice is so earnest, so vulnerable, so _hopeful,_ and Brooke can’t say no to that. She can’t, well. She can’t deny it.

“Promise me it’s gonna be different this time?” Brooke asks, ignoring the little shocks of lightning down her spine, focusing on the way Chloe’s smile lights up her face, the softness of her skin in the low light of her bedroom through the phone and the way Brooke can look at her eyes without feeling her heart stop.

“I promise it with everything I have, Brooke.” There’s a split second where Brooke almost wishes Chloe would call her the ever-familiar _Brookie._ But it fades. Bittersweet reality settles in. She rests her face on her folded hands and changes the subject.

“Um, how was that history homework?”

“Bullshit.” Chloe snorts. She pauses, cocks her head. “Is everything really okay? I don’t want to- I really don’t want to hurt you anymore.”

“We’re okay, Chloe.” Brooke smiles as best as she can and lets Chloe ramble about the history homework, feeling the shocks fade to fizziness fade to routine. 

When Chloe hangs up the call somewhere around eleven thirty, she blows Brooke a kiss. The last thing Brooke hears before falling asleep is a whispered promise, but she can’t remember exactly what it was when she wakes up in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me @amessofgaywords on twitter.


End file.
